From fairly early in the history of the Colony of New South Wales there have been counts made of the number of people living in it. People were named individually, making censuses and musters useful to us when trying to find out where a person was living and what they were doing.

Here is a rather poor copy of a page from the 1837 Muster of Convicts:

Page from the 1837 Convict Muster

In the early days of the colonies of Australia censuses involved nothing more than gathering every person together in one place and counting them. This was called a ‘muster’, and is similar to the process used to count sheep before herding them off to the stockyards.

The first census as we know it, where people were counted in their homes, was in New South Wales in 1828. It had been brought to the Governor’s attention that free settlers could not be forced to attend a muster…

As more information was required, more questions were asked. An important consideration in the beginning of the new colonies was whether there was enough food to go around, so the early musters indicate whether each person was dependent on government stores for food. Only heads of households were listed by name, with dependent wives, children and servants counted but not named. As the inhabitants started to grow their own food it was important to know what they were growing, so these questions were asked.

Here is a list of the early censuses and musters available for New South Wales with their availablity to researchers.

1800-1802

A muster was taken between Jul and August 1800, when Governor Philip Gidley King assumed control of the colony. Additional musters were taken at the same time of year in 1801 and 1802.

Governor King’s Lists 1801 can be found on PRO Reel 10 and the Norfolk Island Victualling Book 1802 on PRO Reel 14.

1805-6

A general muster of prisoners and freemen was taken on Tuesday 12th August 1806, with the landholders mustered on Thursday 14th August. The muster gives information on ‘how employed’ or ‘with whom lives (females)’, which is information that is available nowhere else. A Land and Stock Muster was collected on the same day, containing acreages of the different crops, numbers of horses, cattles, sheep, goats and hogs, numbers of bushels of wheat, maize and barley on hand, and the numbers of persons and whether victualled by the government, with remarks about residence.

The Norfolk Island Muster of 1805 has been transcribed in the same volume, as has Samuel Marsden’s Female Muster 1806. The Reverend Samuel Marsden collected information on the females of the colony, probably from the original 1806 muster. This muster classifies the women as ‘concubine’, ‘married’ or ‘wife’, and records, where possible, where the woman was married and numbers of legitimate and ‘natural’ children.

Images of the 1806 muster is available on PRO Reel 72 and on Ancestry. Marsden’s muster is at the Mitchell Library in Sydney.

1811

The muster was taken between 5 February and 5 March 1811. Individuals are listed alphabetically within category – male convicts, female convicts, free men and free women. Information listed:

Both the General Muster and the Land and Stock Muster have been transcribed:

Baxter, Carol J. GeneralMuster and Land and Stock Muster of New South Wales, 1822. Sydney: ABGR, 1988.

Images of the General Muster is available on PRO Reel 72 and on Ancestry. The Land and Stock Muster is only available on SRNSW Reel 1252.

1823-25

In 1823 a General Muster was taken in September 1823, and a muster book compiled by the Colonial Secretary’s office. Subsequent musters in 1824 and 1825 were taken at the same time of year, but instead of compiling new lists the decision was made to update the 1823 list instead, resulting in a much more complete and more accurate list. Additional details were added up to 1832.

The muster includes:

Name

Age

Status

Ship of arrival

Ship year

Sentence

Occupation, Employer, etc

The 1825 muster was the last muster. Free settlers were increasingly unwilling to attend musters, and the government realised it had no power to compel them.

Ancestry has digitized images of the muster books, which are also available on PRO Reel 66.

1828

The 1828 Census was taken in November 1828, although returns straggled in early the next year. This was the first census to be taken in Australia and the only census to survive in its entirety to the present day. About a quarter of the householders’ returns survive.

Both colonial and British copies survive, as do most of the householders’ returns. There are differences in each, so it is important to check them all if possible.

Malcolm Sainty and Keith Johnson (editors) have compiled a database on CD 1828 Census Revised Edition which collects data from both the Australian and British versions of the census together with the returns of the householders themselves. This is the most complete list available, as there were many transcription errors in the compiling and copying of the lists, and some people were left out of the lists completely.

1837

The 1837 Convict Muster is more of a compilation than a traditional muster, and as such is more accurate. The new governor, Sir George Gipps, needed to establish an accurate count of the convicts in the colony as it was likely that transportation would soon cease.

I remember the old Reader’s Digest Atlas of Australia that my mother had when I was young. Half of it had detailed maps of the country, but the first half showed New South Wales with different overlays to show the distribution of different things – people, minerals, spoken languages, and so on.

Now there is a similar atlas online, and it’s absolutely marvellous!

NSW Land and Property Information, or the NSW Lands Department as we know them, have set of maps online for historians and other researchers to play with. It’s called the Atlas of New South Wales.

There is quite a bit of contextual information on the site. The most important part, though, and the most fun, is the Atlas Explorer. This allows you to view, in map or satellite image form, the State of New South Wales or Australia as a whole. For example, you can look at the Changing State Borders map and move the slider along the timeline to see when the different colonies were established and the borders of New South Wales changed as a result.

You can zoom in and out, choose different types of information within each map, and for some maps you can slide along a timeline to see how things have changed over time. Here is a list of the broad categories of maps available:

People

Populations

Health

Housing

Religion

Indigenous Population

Social Inclusion

Crime

Economy

Labour Force

Labour Underutilisation

Economic Sectors

taxation and Revenue

Agriculture

Forestry

Fruit and Vegetables

Oils and Grains

Livestock

History

Heritage Properties

European Settlement

Changing State Borders

Goldrush

Elections

Environment

Geology

Soils

Vegetation

National Parks

Census 2006

Populations Distribution

Indigenous Population

Housing Costs

Income

Dwellings

Religion

Languages

In the examples below I have looked at the maps for European settlement and moved along the timeline from 1820 to 1830. This maps shows how far Europeans settlement had spread in 1820:

This map shows the spread in 1830:

You can see how far Europeans had spread in ten short years. It had already overrun the Nineteen Counties and the Limits of Location. Port Macquarie had been established, and the spaces in between were being filled in. Compare this map with the Map of the Nineteen Counties on the State Records NSW website.

There is much, much more in the Atlas than I can describe here. Have a look around and let us know what you find.

It’s census time again, and again we are being asked if we want to save our answers for 99 years and then make them public.

I am saying YES.

We rely so much on the information from censuses in the United Kingdom and other countries to discover the basic structure of our ancestors’ families and we are disappointed to find that the same information is not available here.

Our descendants and other researchers will thanks us, and we won’t be around to be embarrassed.

I was born in Sydney and grew up in country NSW. I've lived in Sydney since leaving school and starting university. My mother is the descendant of farmers and graziers on her father's side, and professionals on her mother's; and my father is a South Sea Islander. Read More…